“They wouldn’t stop looking at me,” she said.
The real problem, of course, was that no one looked at her, no one saw. Every day she walked out into the world with nothing more than a name and a hair color to disguise her-and no one ever noticed. She came to the breakfast table, aching in parts of herself that she barely knew, and the only thing anyone said was, “Do you want jelly on your toast?” Or, “It’s a cold morning, so I made hot chocolate.” See me, Roger Daltrey sang on her little red tape recorder. See me. Irene called up the stairs, Turn that noise down. She yelled back, It’s opera. I’m listening to an opera. Don’t sass me. You have chores.
Chores. Yes, she had a lot of chores, and they didn’t end at nightfall. Sometimes she made a list, called Who-I-Hate-the-Most, and Irene was never lower than three, and sometimes she made it as high as two.
Number one, however, was hers and hers alone.
PART II. THE MAN WITH THE BLUE GUITAR (1975)
CHAPTER 6
“Take your sister,” their father said, in both girls’ hearing, so Sunny couldn’t lie about it later. Otherwise, Heather knew, her older sister would have nodded and pretended agreement, then left her at home anyhow. Sunny was sneaky that way. Or tried to be, but Heather was forever catching her in her schemes.
“Why?” Sunny protested automatically. She must have known that the argument was lost before it began. It was pointless to argue with their father, although, unlike their mother, he didn’t mind when they talked back. He was happy to have long discussions in which he debated their points. He even helped them shape their side of things, build their cases like lawyers, which he was always reminding them that they could be. They could be anything they wanted, their father told them frequently. Yet in an argument with him, they could never be right. It was not unlike playing checkers with him, when he would guide his opponent’s hand with small shakes and nods of his head, letting the girls avert disastrous moves that might result in double-or even triple-jumps. Still, he somehow claimed victory in the final play, even when he was down to just one king.
“Heather’s only eleven,” he said in what the sisters thought of as his reasoning voice. “She can’t stay home alone. Your mother’s already left for work, and I have to be at the shop by ten.”
Head lowered over her plate, Heather watched them through her lashes, still as a cat studying a squirrel. She was torn. Normally she pushed for greater privileges whenever possible. She wasn’t a baby. She would be twelve next week. She should be allowed to stay at home alone on a Saturday afternoon. Since her mother had started working last fall, Heather was alone for at least an hour every afternoon, and the only rules were that she mustn’t touch the stove or have friends over. Heather liked that hour. She got to watch what she wanted on television-The Big Valley, usually-and eat as many graham crackers as she wanted.
That bit of freedom, however, had been forced on her parents. They had wanted Heather to wait in the Dickey Hill Elementary School library after school until Sunny could collect her, the same plan they had used when Heather was in fifth grade and fourth grade before that. But Dickey Hill got out at three and Sunny didn’t get home from junior high until past four now that her bus ride was so long. The principal at Dickey Hill had told Heather’s parents in no uncertain terms-that was her mother’s recounting of the story, and the phrase had stuck with Heather, in no uncertain terms-that her librarian was not a baby-sitter. So Heather’s parents, always eager not to be seen as people who expected special treatment, had decided that Heather could be in the house by herself. And if she could be by herself for an hour every day, Monday through Friday, then why couldn’t she be alone for three hours on a Saturday? Five was greater than three. Plus, if she won the right to stay home today, maybe she would never have to spend another deadly dull Saturday in her father’s store, much less her mother’s real-estate office.
But that long-term possibility paled alongside the prospect of a Saturday at Security Square Mall, a place of great novelty to Heather. Over the past year, Sunny had fought for and won the right to be dropped off there on Saturday afternoons, once a month, to meet friends for matinees. Sunny also got to baby-sit, earning seventy-five cents an hour. Heather hoped to start doing that, too, once she was twelve, which was just next week. Sunny complained that she spent years trying to gain her privileges, only to see Heather awarded them at a younger age. So what? That was the price of progress. Heather couldn’t remember where she had heard that phrase, but she had adopted it for her own. You couldn’t argue with progress. Unless it was something like the highway through the park, and then you could. But that was because there were deer and other wildlife. That was the environment, which was more important than progress.
“You can go to the mall today if you take your sister,” their father repeated, “or you can stay home with her. Those are your choices.”
“If I have to stay at home with Heather, shouldn’t I be paid for babysitting?” Sunny asked.
“Family members don’t charge one another for doing things for the family,” their father said. “That’s why your allowance isn’t chore-based. You get spending money because your mother and I recognize that you need some discretionary income, even if we don’t always approve of the things you buy. The family is an entity, joined in a common good. So no, you don’t get money for taking care of your sister. But I will provide bus fare for both of you if you want to go to the mall.”
“Big whoop,” Sunny muttered, chopping up her pancakes but not really eating them.
“What did you say?” her father asked, his tone dangerous.
“Nothing. I’ll take Heather to the mall.”
Heather was elated. Bus fare. That was an extra thirty-five cents to spend as she wanted. Not that thirty-five cents could buy that much, but it was thirty-five cents of her own she didn’t have to spend and could therefore save. Heather was good at saving money. Hoarding, her father called it, and he was being critical, but Heather didn’t care. She had thirty-nine dollars in a metal box bound with a complicated system of elastic bands, so she could tell if anyone had tried to get inside it. But she wouldn’t take her money to the mall today, because then she couldn’t be tempted to spend it. No, she would compare prices and study sales, then return with her birthday money when she had made a careful decision about what she wanted. She wouldn’t waste her money on an impulse as Sunny often did. Last fall Sunny had bought a poor-boy knit sweater, off-white, with a red placket. The red trim had bled on the first washing, creating twin tracks on the sweater’s back. But it was the kind of sale that said no returns, and Sunny would have been out eleven dollars if their mother hadn’t gone to the store and berated the salesperson, embarrassing Sunny so much that she wouldn’t even say thank you.